Immigration officials on Tuesday morning arrested 25-year-old union farmworker activist Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez in Sedro-Woolley, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records and Juarez’s fellow organizers.

Juarez, who is a member of the Indigenous Mexican Mixteco community, has organized on behalf of farmworker rights in Washington state since he was 14 years old and worked as a berry picker, according to Rosalinda Guillen, a longtime activist leader and founder of social justice group Community to Community Development.

Guillen says Juarez called her shortly before 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday and she heard Juarez’s partner screaming and crying before the call abruptly ended.

“(It was) Lelo’s voice saying, ‘Leave her alone. She has nothing to do with this. I was just taking her to work,'” Guillen said.

An ICE spokesperson said Juarez is a citizen of Mexico and was ordered by an immigration judge to return there in 2018. Juarez “refused to comply with lawful commands to exit the vehicle he was occupying at the time of the arrest,” according to the spokesperson, and will remain in ICE detention during deportation proceedings.

Juarez was driving his partner to her job at a tulip bulb company in Mount Vernon, said Edgar Franks, political director for Indigenous farmworkers union Familias Unidas por la Justicia. Franks said officials broke Juarez’s window and forced him out of the vehicle. Juarez later called from an ICE facility in Ferndale, Whatcom County, and said he had been detained.

Protests were held in Tacoma yesterday.